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ELEPHANT-HUMAN CONFLICE
There are less elephants in the Southern Kunene region now than when they first returned to the area in the late 1990s. This decline is largely due to human-elephant conflict incidents. The competition for land and critical resources, such as water, often results in conflict situations between the desert-elephants and the people living alongside them.
Although elephants used to roam throughout most of western Namibia, they were reduced to fewer than 300 animals by the early 1990s from rampant over-hunting. Since then, protected under Namibia's law and merging conservation organisations, they have expanded their range. The desert-adapted elephants have migrated from the north, where they were safer living among the nomadic Himba people, as far south as the Erongo Region, and east onto commercial farmland. Many of the Damara and Herero people who moved into the arid homelands of northwest Namibia are not familiar with elephants, and so are often frightened and angry when elephants come to drink at water reservoirs near their homesteads.
Elephant damage
On both communal and commercial farms, the elephants may damage the water installations, pulling out pipes, toppling windmills or breaking engines and pumps. This may be due to mischievous behaviour, out of curiosity or in search of water. A herd of 10 or more elephants can easily empty a water reservoir that is meant for livestock and family needs. Sometimes the elephants forage in gardens, which leaves families without food, or they break fences and scatter cattle, sheep and goats, perhaps injuring or even killing the livestock. Damage can also be caused to the homesteads.
On rare occasions, elephants have actually killed people. The reality of living with elephants is often overlooked by most people. To be inside a house made of mud and sticks whilst a herd of elephants are outside is an incredibly scary experience. Local communities have lost the knowledge of how to live side by side with the elephants and often reactions towards elephants unintentionally provoke a dangerous situation.
PEACE Project
EHRA’s PEACE Project is helping people become more accepting of the elephants as they learn how to live alongside them safely, although with many more people needing support there is a long way to go.
